Intel x-25m Issue?

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WasntMe

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 7, 2007
Messages
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Just bought an Intel X-25m SSD. Installed Windows 7 64-bit and everything seems to be running fine.

I downloaded and installed the Intel SSD Toolbox and I it is reporting "error connecting to drive".

The drive seems to be running fine. TRIM is enabled in the OS and defrag was automatically turned off.

How can I get to the Toolbox to see the drive?
How can I be sure TRIM is in fact running?

I've seen a lot of information out there concerning this issue but nothing seems to fix my issue with the toolbox reporting "error connecting to drive".

PC Specs are in the signature.
 
Is your board an intel chipset board? Perhaps try installing the Intel SATA/RAID drivers (even if you don't run a RAID setup)?
 
Are you running in AHCI mode?
Can you post a screenshot of AS SSD or CrystalDiskMark (i prefer AS SSD) and post it here? That would tell if your SSD is aligned properly and has NCQ enabled.
 
No. The board uses NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI.

I've heard about the SATA drivers but have no good clue on where to find them.
 
You should not use the nVidia drivers; as that would mean TRIM would not work for you.
 
We are talking about the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller drivers, right?

I am currently using 'Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Contoller'.

The drive is being seen as 'INTEL SS DSA2M080G2GC SCSI Disk Device'.

Is there a better driver to use? If so, where could this be found? Windows currently says I am using the best driver for the device.
 
Why are you using a slow PCI controller together with your SSD?

The fastest solution would be to connect them to your chipset SATA ports instead, and set the SATA controller to AHCI mode. Then make sure you use the Microsoft AHCI driver.

If you would post a screenshot of AS SSD on your running system, i could see if you setup things properly.
 
Well... I tried to run AS SSD and I got a blue screen from nvstor.sys (my driver according to AS SSD). I did run AS SSD yesterday just fine. No dice now.

BSOD Error:
Code: 
Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	BlueScreen
  OS Version:	6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
  Locale ID:	1033

Additional information about the problem:
  BCCode:	d1
  BCP1:	0000000000000038
  BCP2:	0000000000000002
  BCP3:	0000000000000000
  BCP4:	FFFFF8800103D96B
  OS Version:	6_1_7600
  Service Pack:	0_0
  Product:	768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
  C:\Windows\Minidump\042210-15740-01.dmp
  C:\Users\gdorrell\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-21855-0.sysdata.xml

Screen Shot:
as-ssd-benchINTELSSDSA2M08422201011.png
 
sub.mesa said:
Why are you using a slow PCI controller together with your SSD?

The fastest solution would be to connect them to your chipset SATA ports instead, and set the SATA controller to AHCI mode. Then make sure you use the Microsoft AHCI driver.

If you would post a screenshot of AS SSD on your running system, i could see if you setup things properly.
Click to expand...

I am running exactly what Windows used when I did the install last night. I haven't changed a thing. I'm looking to correct errors if possible so any help would be appreciated
 
Here is a screenshot of my device manager. Should I be looking at the IDE or Storage Controllers section? I may be looking at the wrong one.

devman.png
 
Where did you connect your SSD to? To your orange chipset-powered SATA ports on the motherboard? I first thought you had a separate PCI based controller.

You installed the nVidia driver, probably by installing the chipset drivers for your motherboard. You should de-install these and run AS SSD again, it should say msahci instead. Also check if your controller is set to AHCI in the BIOS instead of IDE or RAID mode.
 
Thanks for the replies...

I have the drive plugged into the first SATA port on the motherboard (followed by a second HDD and a DVD-RW).

I did install the nVidia driver. I will uninstall that and run it again. Will the msahci driver automatically be installed after I uninstall the nVidia driver?

Also, my bios doesn't have any place on it that allows me to change to AHCI from of IDE or RAID mode. I have a RAID setup component in the BIOS but I did not see anything for AHCI.

My motherboard info is linked below.
http://www.biostar-usa.com/app/en-us/mb/content.php?S_ID=181
 
Look carefully in all the menus and submenus of your BIOS; it really should be in there. You should be able to chose between IDE/AHCI/SATA/RAID mode.

I already looked up your motherboard, to see if it had any additional onboard SATA controllers; but only chipset so you're good with the 6 onboard SATA.

If you uninstall nvidia driver and reboot, it will automatically use the microsoft driver; check with AS SSD; and also it shouldn't crash anymore!
 
Here are screen shots of my BIOS.

BIOS 'IDE Function Setup' Menu:
ide2.png


BIOS RAID Submenu:
ide1.png


Any ideas?
 
No i don't see it. First try uninstalling the nVidia driver and see if it uses the Microsoft one; then look for AS SSD. If the 4K and 4K-64 read tests are very similar then NCQ does not work properly. The 64 test should be 8x-10x higher on intel.
 
I'll post a screen shot when I get home and try it out. Thanks again for all the help!
 
How do you uninstall the driver?

I tried to through the device manager and it doesn't uninstall the driver even after reboot. I also tried Guru Driver Sweeper and uninstalled the driver. When the PC tried to boot back up I got a BSOD and had to access the restore point to get back up and running. :(
 
So I uninstalled the bad drivers... no clue how it works but did it through the DevManager.

I ran AS SSD again and the results are below. As you can see they are low and the driver is wrong (pciide).

as-ssd-benchINTELSSDSA2M08042220106.png
 
Also, this is what the device manager shows. If I update the driver, the one Windows selects is the nVidia one. Not sure how to get Windows to use the other one that you recommend.

pc2.png
 
LOL I gave up and reinstalled Win7.

Guess what? The driver is there by default when it's installed. Now the driver is there by default with a Windows install. How the HELL does one get around this issue?!?!
 
Rather than uninstalling the driver, what about choosing "Update Driver" and selecting the MS one? I think that's what was suggested in another thread.
 
Did you choose to let it search for a driver automatically, or browse to the location of the MS driver in the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers directory?
 
Ok... since my mobo doesn't support AHCI directly in the BIOS, do you think buying an addon card will fix the issue? Or will that not equal the performance of onboard SATA controller?

I really don't want to buy a mobo/cpu/ram just to make this SSD work the way it should.
 
Yeah, I'm somewhat lost on what to do. I'd hate to have to buy a whole new PC just to support the new SSD.
 
Whether your mobo's controller supports IDE or AHCI mode (or whether you can run the Toolbox or not) shouldn't be a big deal... Altho AHCI is preferable for NCQ, but you absolutely need to use either MS's storage driver or Intel's (w/Intel controllers obviously) in order to gain TRIM support, that's what you need to focus on. I've got no idea if NV's SATA controllers ever worked with the MS driver or if they always required their own driver...

I think people might've just sort of assumed they would work w/the MS driver because most other controllers do. SATA controllers were one of the notoriously buggy parts about NV mobos, unfortunately.

All is not lost if you can't get TRIM working tho, you could always just format the drive to something less than it's total capacity, leaving some extra scratch space for the drive's own controller to play with, mitigating the need for TRIM to an extent (you'd have to do a secure erase now in order to go that route, so that the unallocated space is reset). A secure erase every couple of years would restore performance as well...

There's still the matter of those buggy performance numbers tho, dunno what to tell ya. Worse comes to worst, I don't think you'd have to swap mobo, CPU, and RAM though... I'm not terribly familiar w/AMD parts these days but isn't that an AM2 proc? It should work on relatively recent mobos no? Along with the DDR2... So you could just swap the mobo itself to something more recent from AMD, it wouldn't cost ya that much.
 
I actually just did that. I purchased another mobo from newegg (ty egg). It should be here in a few days. I can re-use the RAM/CPU and the new mobo doesn't use nForce.

Thanks for the help. Sad to see that this was the only route to take.

I will update this thread after I get the new mobo up and running with the SSD.
 
Glad to hear that it (sort of) worked out at 'least... Had my last few upgrades happened a lil' earlier I would probably have been on the same boat as you. I almost bought a 650i several times, never had an AMD NV mobo tho... Had one or two by VIA, not that VIA was any better, the last one was surprisingly solid tho (A8V Deluxe, but I credit ASUS for that).
 
So because this issue is somewhat resolved, I don't feel bad about hijacking the thread a little. :cool:

Does this look right for my SSD? (same as OP's)

as-ssd-benchINTELSSDSA2M08042320109.png


I notice several differences, such as I use the Intel AHCI driver rather than the MS one (which is better?), and the firmware is different, although when I tried to update the firmware it told me it already had the latest one. Speeds seem fine (from what I can tell), but is everything ideally configured? This is on a more-or-less fresh install of Win7 Pro x64.
 
Alright, thanks. :cool:

I was just curious about what the "1024 K - OK" meant, because the other person's was a value about an order of magnitude larger. Also, about the firmware difference. But I guess if the speeds seem fine then there's no reason to worry.
 
That is the offset of the partition; OK if it is aligned and NOT OK if it is not. :)

Yours is 1024K, which is the default 1 megabyte offset that Vista/win7 uses. Others will have 100 megabyte offset, due to the extra 100MB system partition some (?) windows 7 versions create. As long as it says OK, you're in good shape!
 
Issue resolved with a new motherboard that supports AHCI.

Was able to get the PC up and running and verified in AS SSD that it's running great on the default MS driver.

Sucks to have required a new mobo, but it didn't kill me. Now I can get a new processor! Excuses!!!
 
InvisiBill said:
I guess it's a little late, but the solution should be here: MUST READ for Nvidia MB owners and G2 Intel SSD
Click to expand...

I went through that thread when I was having my issue. It didn't fix the problem, it masks it instead. The drive still isn't AHCI capable and the drive isn't seen as SATA. It just allows the toolbox to see the drive so that it doesn't display an error. The performance was still in the gutter (though better than it was with the nVidia driver).

Once I got the new motherboard, setup AHCI and retested, the results were amazing. Now I see why SSDs rock. :)

Thx for the reply though.
 
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